Thursday, July 13:
R. had a very bad night; he has been reading Mendès’s Commune and says: “What play-actors these Frenchmen are! As long as they were playing to the world, it worked, but now the world is no longer looking, they become Charenton inmates, imagining themselves to be this person or that.” The abuse against the Germans does not cease.
R. does not work; he writes to the King and sends him the “Huldigungsmarsch,” the orchestral score of which has just been published. Visit from Herr and Frau Schott in the afternoon, and since he was mayor of Mainz during the great period, they have a lot of interesting things to tell. They find my children well behaved and pretty, which gratifies me.
In the evening R. wonders whether or not to inform Bismarck of his plans; I observe that it would be better to wait until the finances are secured and then to send him a report which makes no demands on him.